Tears Are for Angels by Paul Connolly Page B

came up on the porch, the rain had stopped completely. I was sitting on the floor in the bedroom, against the opposite wall from the dressing table. The bottle was beside me on the floor and it was almost empty now.
        I called out to them and they came on back to the lighted bedroom door and stopped there and looked around at the blood-splattered room.
        Walt's deep-set eyes lighted on the bottle.
        "Good," he said. "Ease off the shock."
        "Go to hell," I said.
        "Take it easy, Harry."
        He went over to the dressing table and touched it once and then he leaned over and read the note. He looked quickly at me and this time saw the arm and the tourniquet. He came quickly across the room and knelt by me and looked at the wound.
        "You, Bill," he said. "Go git that first-aid stuff in the car and then drive Harry to the hospital."
        Bill faded out of the door.
        Walt rocked back on his lean haunches.
        "All this blood your'n?"
        "It's ketchup. Don't you know ketchup from blood?"
        He looked at the bottle again and moved it from my reach.
        "You got the shock eased off enough," he said. "Tell me about it."
        I closed my eyes and let my head go back against the wall.
        "I came back from that fishing trip I planned. Stormed on me and I came back. She wasn't expecting me and I came in quiet. Going to surprise her."
        I heard Bill come back up on the porch.
        "She was sitting there where she is now. She had the gun. First thing I saw when I opened the door. 'What the hell,' I said. She didn't say anything. She just got up and came over and stood right in front of me, holding the gun. 'Put that thing down,' I told her."
        Bill put the first-aid kit in Walt's hand. Walt opened it and began to fumble around inside of it.
        "Then she said, 'You're back,' just like that, in a funny kind of voice. 'Yeah,' I said, and I started to reach out and get the gun and then she said, 'that makes it better.' And then she lifted up the gun and pointed it at me and I hollered and she shot me before I could move."
        "Take it easy," Walt said again. He shook a powder out over the wound and began to fish in the kit for gauze.
        "I went down. I couldn't even move. I guess she thought I was dead. I tried to holler or something but I couldn't make a sound. It was like I was paralyzed. And then I heard that typewriter going and I knew I was crazy. It must be a dream, I thought. And about that time the typing stopped and in a minute the gun went off again."
        He was bandaging the wound now, but his eyes were on mine. I managed to keep staring at him and I thought the whisky was good protection. If I acted funny they could blame it on that.
        "I had to just lay there but pretty soon I got- to where I could move and then I got up and crawled over there and saw what it was. After a while I got this tourniquet and went back and got the bottle and called you."
        You can't prove it a goddamn bit different, I thought, not if you wanted to. A hick sheriff like you, spending half your time with those roosters you're always fighting. Just get it over with, that's all.
        For God's sake, just get it over with.
        The bandage was finished and he nodded at Bill. Bill helped me up and I grabbed the bottle again and killed it in one swallow and threw it on the bed. That's where you belong, I thought. In the bed with the other dead soldiers.
        "Bill will take you to the hospital," Walt was saying. "I'll handle ev'rything here. Then you get some sleep an' we'll talk tomorrow."
        "Tomorrow's a big word," I said.
        "It'll get here."
        So I let Bill take my arm and help me and we were almost out of that room when Walt spoke again.
        "That note, Harry. What it says right?"
        I looked at him a long time. So what? I thought. What difference does it make